JT Torres' De La Riva Pass: A BJJ Breakdown
When we first posted JT Torres' De La Riva pass on Jiu Jitsu Style back in November 2015, the write-up was a single line — a great look at how one of the best passers in BJJ deals with the De La…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When we first posted JT Torres' De La Riva pass on Jiu Jitsu Style back in November 2015, the write-up was a single line — a great look at how one of the best passers in BJJ deals with the De La Riva guard. It didn't need any more than that. Torres had recently thrown in with Atos, he was carving through IBJJF brackets, and everyone who watched the clip could see exactly what they were getting: a clean, unhurried answer to one of the most annoying guards in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, taught by a man who was about to become a two-time ADCC champion. Eleven years on, the clip has aged into something better than a technique of the week. It's a small masterclass in how to pass a guard that has only grown more dangerous since.
Watch it: JT Torres passing the De La Riva guard.
The De La Riva guard is the hook that launched a thousand berimbolos. The bottom player wraps his outside leg around the outside of your lead knee, digs the hook in behind your thigh, grabs an ankle or a sleeve, and from there he can off-balance you, spin under you, or invert straight to your back. If you have ever felt the floor disappear from under your lead foot mid-roll, that was a De La Riva hook doing its job. What Torres shows in the clip is that you don't beat it by ripping and sprinting. You beat it by taking the hook's power away first, and only then passing.
How JT Torres Kills the De La Riva Hook
Watch the old footage closely and the whole pass turns on the lead leg. Torres' first job isn't to move — it's to stop being moved. He controls the hooking foot and the sleeve or ankle grip that feeds it, flattens his shin, and drops his weight so the De La Riva hook has nothing to lever against. A live hook can spin you; a dead one is just a leg draped over your knee. Only once the off-balance is gone does he start to travel, clearing the hook down and pinning it to the mat as he steps his lead leg free and drives his hips forward into a knee cut or a leg drag on the other side.
Beginners get the order backwards. They feel the De La Riva hook, panic, and lunge for the pass while their base is still compromised — which is precisely the reaction the bottom player is fishing for. Torres does the boring thing first. He wins the grip fight, kills the hook, settles his weight, and then passes, so that by the time he's moving the guard is already broken. It's the same lesson that runs through every good passer in Jiu Jitsu: control before travel.
Why the De La Riva Pass Still Matters in Modern BJJ
If anything, this pass is more relevant now than it was in 2015. The De La Riva and its reverse cousin sit underneath most of the modern guard game — the berimbolos and leg drags of the Mendes and Miyao era, the matrix entries the Ruotolo brothers throw at black belts, the inverted attacks Mikey Musumeci hunts from the same hook. Athletes like Tainan Dalpra have made a career out of the exact skill Torres is demonstrating: shutting down the De La Riva before it can spin, then passing off a dead hook. Learn to handle this guard and you've handled the doorway to half the offence in competitive Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
There's a quieter lesson in it too. Torres didn't beat the De La Riva with anything flashy — no jumping pass, no scramble. He beat it with grip fighting, weight, and patience, in that order. That's the part worth stealing. Drill the hook control until your lead leg stops getting stolen. Kill the off-balance before you dream about the angle. Pass off the dead hook, not the live one. The guards keep evolving; the answer Torres drew in 2015 keeps working.
See you on the mats.
Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 29 November 2015. Refreshed for 2026.